She had come back too late last night and had simply placed the rabbit keychain beside her pillow before sleeping.
She picked up the rabbit from beside her pillow and stuffed it into her schoolbag.
That afternoon, most of the second-year high school students were selected to attend the speech competition.
After the lunch break, the contestants collectively went backstage of the auditorium to line up and prepare.
Tang Shuxuan borrowed lipstick from a female classmate, and while preparing, she asked Lin Zhexia to hold up a mirror for her.
Lin Zhexia: “Is that necessary?”
Tang Shuxuan: “You don’t understand, a woman adorns herself for the one she loves.”
Lin Zhexia: “With so many people in the audience, will you be able to see him?”
Tang Shuxuan: “As long as he can see me, it’s fine.”
After applying the lipstick, Tang Shuxuan asked her: “How do I look? Doesn’t my complexion look much better?”
This kind of lipstick that wouldn’t be noticed by teachers was very light in color.
But Lin Zhexia still said, “The four words ‘radiantly beautiful’ describe you perfectly. He’ll fall in love with you at first sight.”
The speech competition soon began, and they could hear the voices of the judges and the host from backstage.
And the exaggerated sound when the audience applauded, over a thousand people clapping together, making the entire backstage seem to tremble.
This sound made even Tang Shuxuan, who hadn’t been nervous before, start to feel anxious.
This time, it was Lin Zhexia who comforted her in return: “It’s okay, think about your senior, stay calm.”
Tang Shuxuan: “How are you so calm?”
Lin Zhexia would sometimes unconsciously use a tone similar to Chi Yao’s to show off: “Oh, I’m different from you, I stay composed in the face of danger.”
This similar tone was immediately recognized by Tang Shuxuan.
Tang Shuxuan looked at her: “Why do you sound so much like Chi Yao?”
“…”
Tang Shuxuan went on stage before her.
Since she had previous experience and was also a social butterfly, she quickly adjusted her state, raised her head, straightened her chest, and walked out from backstage.
Lin Zhexia heard Tang Shuxuan’s voice coming through the microphone from backstage, though reaching her through a wall, it sounded heavy and muffled: “Hello everyone, I am Tang Shuxuan from Class 7, Grade 2—”
About twenty minutes later, the heavy velvet curtain at the backstage was pulled open: “Next contestant, get ready.”
The person outside the curtain looked at the situation on stage, then said:
“Okay, next contestant, please come on stage.”
Before walking out from backstage, she let out a light breath.
It would be a lie to say she wasn’t nervous; facing so many people, how could she not be?
But before going on stage, she lowered her head and looked at the little rabbit she had secretly brought with her, hidden in her palm.
She found that there seemed to be nothing to be nervous about.
Holding this rabbit, she felt a certain power emerge from deep within her heart, a small yet warm power, sufficient to help her face anything.
The stage was big.
For her seventeen-year-old self, this was a very, very big stage, big enough to be frightening.
After the host finished speaking and retreated from center stage, she was left alone on the vast platform.
In front of her, teachers and school leaders from various grades sat in the first row.
Behind them was a sea of dark heads, nearly a thousand people sitting in the audience. At this moment, everyone was looking at her.
She couldn’t describe the feeling at this moment—no fear, no desire to retreat, no thoughts at all, or rather, all thoughts were pushed aside by one thought. That thought was—Chi Yao was also in the audience.
Among these people was Chi Yao.
Realizing this, she was no longer afraid.
She unconsciously wanted to find his position among these people.
The seats were arranged by class, making it easy for her to identify the specific location of the second-year students, and she glanced around that area a few times.
Before going on stage, she had said to Tang Shuxuan, “With so many people down there, will you be able to see him?”
She didn’t know if Tang Shuxuan had been able to see him earlier, but she discovered that she could.
She could find him at a glance among the layers of people.
Lin Zhexia’s gaze penetrated the crowd, landing on a corner in the back row of the audience.
In the corner, the light was dim.
The young man’s figure was slender, leaning somewhat lazily against the backrest.
Lin Zhexia’s heart raced before she spoke, gripping the microphone tightly: “Dear teachers, fellow students, good afternoon. I am Lin Zhexia from Class 7, Grade 2. The title of my speech is ‘Youth’.”
Her voice inevitably carried some forced calmness.
Then, she saw that figure move slightly.
Their gazes seemed to meet for a second.
It was also like this that day, the living room was full of people, and in the crowd, she and Chi Yao exchanged a glance.
Around were the encouraging noises from her most familiar childhood friends.
Standing in a place where over a thousand people were watching her, Lin Zhexia’s heart began to beat irregularly.
But the forced calmness in her voice unconsciously faded away, and the speech she recited was not the clichéd draft she had prepared earlier, but a new one she had rewritten last night: “My youth might be somewhat different from everyone else’s, because for me, it has a starting point. That starting point is a very special three-word phrase; those three words are ‘Nanxiang Street’.”
Her voice began to grow stronger.
“My youth began from there.”
…
For Lin Zhexia, the world after growing up was filled with various strange monsters.
Unlike childhood, when she could swing her fists around with recklessness and fearless ignorance.
People unconsciously become timid become weak.
Even when facing things they could accomplish, the first step they take is self-limitation.
But when she encountered those many, many difficult things in life that required courage to accomplish, there was always someone who believed she could do it, and who gave her courage when she tried to muster her own.
So she discovered that the imagined storms that would come actually couldn’t make her wet at all.
Because of all this.
So she seemed to have become a little braver than before.